August 16th // Wildlife and Drinks

     Whale Watching Tour // Nature ●

     We went whale watching, departing from the old harbor at 11 in the morning.  Around Iceland there are twenty different species of whales, eight of which are commonly seen during the whale tours.  Because of the warm water produced by the Midnight Sun and the fairly shallow water, the Reykjavik coast is the perfect place for whales to feed.  Whales can be seen not far from the harbor, if not in it, enjoying the warm waters and plentiful krill.    
     It was a beautiful, but windy, day and the weather was uncharacteristically warm, at 

The boat we went on 

nearly 77 degrees.  In fact, it's quite incredible that the weather was so nice considering that the highest temperature ever recorded in Iceland is 89 degrees.  The sky was clear and the salty mist hit our faces, turning our cheeks red.  We all bundled up in our biggest coats--and as for Kyndall her normal coat.  We arrived at the harbor around 11:00 am and huddled on the dock around the landing for the boat.  The boat was large and made of dark wood, with a thick stripe of white where "Bjossol Sor" is proudly painted in burgundy.  
     We wanted to be on time for the tour, obviously, so we arrived half an hour early.  We didn't mind though because the view from the harbor is incredible.  You can so clearly see the Esjan Mountains, which are just barely 6 over miles north of Reykjavik, that they look almost CGI.  In Iceland, everything is more clear because of their better air quality, making things far away easier to see.  There are many complicated reasons that Iceland has cleaner air, but it mainly boils down to their use of renewable resources.  Anyway, given that America uses mainly fossil fuels, we weren't used to the same resolution in nature.  The old harbor is very close to the Harpa hall, just a few hundred yards, and it was incredible to see it during the day.  Of course, we had seen it in the light of "day" but it's different from a distance with the morning mist hanging over the water. 

Kevin and Big Mama

     Aaron, our tour guide, announced that it was time to go around 11:30.  He gave the whole spiel about how falling off the boat is a bad choice given the 50 degree waters to our tour group, which was about twenty other tourists.   The waters were relatively gentle, but the wind caused some waves to come straight at the hull, making for a bumpy ride.  We sailed for about half an hour before we saw our first whale.  It breached and sharply blew water out of his blowhole.  
     Over the three hour tour we saw four whales: two humpback, a white beaked dolphin, and a killer whale.  They got so close to the boat that we were splashed by the waves from their tails and the blasts from their blow holes.  "That whale basically just sneezed all over us," said Alissa.  The two hump back whales were mother and baby.  They swam so close to the boat that we towered above them, which was a bizarre feeling considering that a grown male humpback weighs upwards of 39 tons.  Abby named them Big Mama, and before she could name the smaller one Little Baby, Taylor named him Kevin.  Kevin and Big Mama swam aside us in the boat for almost ten minutes.  It was incredible being so close to such majestic creatures.  When we got back to the harbor we could barely resist booking a second tour, but we had the Beer Tour that evening. 

     Icelandic Beer Tour // Culture ●
     Given that it's an island and it's dark nearly 20 hours a day in the winter, leaving not much to do but drink, beer is an almost spiritual thing for Iceland.  They have their own unique style and we were lucky to find a tour that only served Icelandic beers.  It was only $49.95 usd per person to taste all the beer our hearts desired.  The tour started at 5:00 pm, with Einstok at a dive bar downtown.  Einstok is a beer made with Icelandic spring water to create a refreshing smoothness.  It is a spin on the classic witbier, a type of beer where the proportion of wheat is much higher than the barley, and has pilsner malt, oats, and Bavarian noble hops which are spiced with coriander and orange peel.  Critics say that it is one of the best white ales, and it's not hard to tell why.  Just about every brand of Icelandic beer uses Icelandic water, along with some kind of malt, which is unique and gives that special something to Icelandic beer.  
     Our first destination on the tour was Snaps, a little bar with large windows with hanging ferns.  Snaps is a beloved Icelandic bar, and has won the "Best Goddamn Restaurant" award for two years in a row.  We tried the Einstök Toasted Porter, with smoky hints of toffee and dark chocolate which cause it to have a color as black as the bottle.  In fact, black beers are a reoccurring theme in Icelandic beers.  We also tried the Lava beer.  It is made with American hops that are added after they are boiled, which is called the "dry hopping" technique.  Critics consider Lava one of the best Icelandic beers, and it has even won gold medals in international competitions.

Lava  Beer

     We went to many bars during the three hour tour and had too many Icelandic beers to count, each one better than the last.  The tour illustrated Iceland's value of independence because most of the beers were made in small independently owned breweries.  We also went to a little bar called the Kaldi Bar where they are know for their Kaldi beers, their own signature line with less additives appreciated by visitors for their classic simplicity.  Our last stop was the Kaffibarinn: coffee shop by day, hottest bar by night.  Their DJ was great and we decided to depart from the tour and stay.  Because it was the end of the night, Kaffibarinn got a little out of hand.  Abby couldn't stop tripping, Kyndall was violently doing the macarena, I lost my shoe and have yet to find it, and Taylor and Alissa were fighting because Alissa wouldn't stop making bad puns.  We met this really cool group of girls who took pity on us, despite the state they were in as well, and called us a cab after we became friends.  Two of them were twins, Alda and Odda Enirdottir.  

Us partying at the Kaffibarinn 

     In Scandinavia, last names are constantly changing and differ from sibling to sibling because their last names are (Insert their father's name here)'s son or daughter.  For example, if you are John's son, you last name becomes Johnson.  It's a little more complicated for girls, however, because either they take their husbands name with their original last name still added, or they are not allowed to change it at all.  It depends on which country.  This process made it nearly impossible to keep a census of population because last names were constantly changing, not to mention that where you live also factor in.  Additionally, sometimes they only go by region names for last names.  Because of this, in some countries the government asked families to abandon this tradition, like they did my family when my grandpa was a child.  The practice, however, still is prevalent in Iceland because of their independent nature and unwillingness to give up their Norse heritage.  

Kaffibarinn 

     Odda an Alda told us about how their job is to have their genes sequenced for researchers to analyze so that they can pick out which genes contribute to disease, and better understand evolution.   Because all Icelanders can be traced back to a few common ancestors, and they are an island that mainly stayed isolated, they are perfect for genealogical research.  They have a remarkably homogeneous population which means that there is much less genetic variation, making it easier for researchers to tell which genes are meaningful and which are not.  Being twins, they're the genetic research gold mine.  They were a part of a project that helped identify genes linked to Alzheimer's.They are one of the 8,000 out of 100,000 people in the study that had the newly discovered so called knock-out gene.  It has the ability to disable another gene.  This is a tremendously important discovery considering that this could lead to gene splicing that is viewed as more ethical.  The idea of changing the human genetic code scares many people, and while it can have it's drawbacks it can also have immeasurable benefits.   Showing that these knock-out genes already exist in a human population, they said, could open up for more open discussion on gene splicing.  We all found this fascinating, and wanted to learn more before we left.

     We had tons of fun with Alda and Odda!  They had that sarcastic Scandinavian sense of humor, that made them instantly best friends with Alissa.  They even managed to stop Kyndall's Macarenia-ing, thank goodness.  We started doing some absolutely awful karaoke, and made huge fools of ourselves, but it was tons of fun.  It was a great and crazy night with the twins that I doubt we'll ever forget--that is if we can remember all of it.  They called us a cab and we said our goodbyes.  

 

Árbæjarsafn Museum // History ●

The mu seam and an employee

     In the cab Alissa accidentally gave the driver the wrong directions to the Black Pearl and we ended up going to the Árbæjarsafn historical museum of Iceland.  You can imagine our surprise when we drunkenly rolled up to a cottage full of historical items.  By then it was sunrise, and since the museum opened at 5 am we were able to go inside.  The building is an Icelandic turf house.  They look like little hobbit holes and are absolutely adorable.  Turf houses are built using a flat stone foundation as a base and then a wooden frame, followed by stone walls to put the turf (dirt and grass seeds) on top of.  They were mainly made because Iceland has very little trees to use as timer, so using turf and stone would conserve wood because all that would be needed was enough for the front.  Normally, the only external wood would be for the door, which was often decorative and brightly colored, and in some cases paneling, but most commonly stone work would be used.  Also, the earth would keep the heat from the big fire in the hearth inside of the buildings for as long as possible.  Several hundred years ago they abandoned outhouses and instead built rudimentary indoor toilets inside of them because it was too cold to go outside in the winters.  Turfhouses are very common in the Westfjords and in the country side.  

Kyndall and Abby at another
nearby turf house

     In the middle of the 20th century, around the 1940s, there was a concern that with modernization, the culture and aesthetic of old Rekjavik would be lost.  The employees wear traditional Icelandic clothes to help bring visitors back in time and live in one of the buildings.  The community began collecting records and traditional objects soon after.   The entire museum is made up of around 30 individual buildings built over the past 70 years, often one or two a decade which were like a window into that time.  There's a library filled with original works of Icelandic literature--fun fact: Icelandic authors publish the most books per capita in the entire world.  There is a building that houses the complete history of Reykjavik--short as it may be--and Iceland as a whole. 
     Reykjavik started out as a small port city and as a hub for fishing, but when urbanization picked up in Iceland in the mid 1900s.  In 1801 there were only 600 people living in Reykjavik, and in and by 1970 it spiked to 81,693.  Similar to how St. Petersberg Russia was a "window to the west",  Reykjavik became an economic hub and a lifeline to the outside world, so it only makes sense that it would become the capitol after they gained independence from Denmark in 1944.  It was a peaceful movement, no fighting ever occurred.  Instead, they perused through legal actions to Danish officials until they gained it and were able to sever all ties with them.